mac laptop for ex1 on the road

[Michael Palmer]

Mac Book Pro 15″, get the largest hard drive they offer, it should come with 2 gigs of RAM and you should be good to go. You will need a couple of external drives with you.

Good Luck
Michael Palmer

[Dave Raizman]

The 15″ macbook pros come with a 200GB 7200rpm drive or a larger 250GB 5400 rpm drive. Will the slower speed have much of an impact on performance?

Can you recommend any small (physically) sturdy external drives that can run off of a battery or external power source as well as the laptop as a power source? My fantasy is a drive with an sxs slot that I can dump the cards onto without needing to get out my laptop. Does that exist?

This kind of long term mobile shooting is a new experience for me so I appreciate any help or insight that anyone may have for facilitating my workflow.

Does anyone have any experience with portable solar panels for charging batteries?

Thanks,
Dave

Dave Raizman
Springboard Media
springboardhd.com
802-279-6596

[Craig Seeman]

I went the 15″ MacBookPro route. If you keep it fit and trim you can even use the internal drive. If you get an external you might consider one that can be firewire buss powered. Also back up to DL-DVD (although that won’t be fast).

[Noah Kadner]

Go 7200 RPM. If you need more space take a FW800 bus-powered G-RAID.

Noah

My FCP Blog. Unlock the secrets of the DVX100, HVX200 and Apple Color and Win a Free Letus Extreme.
Now featuring the Sony EX1 Guidebook, DVD Studio Pro and Sound for Film and TV.
https://www.callboxlive.com

[Nick Righton]

check out the lacie rugged drive. They offer a firewire 800 version that is bus powered and 500 gigabytes.

https://www.amazon.com/500GB-Rugged-Triple-FW400-FW800/dp/B0018B5CA8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1216257218&sr=8-3

Nick

I wish I was good at one thing rather than average at many, but oh well.

[Tom David]

You’ll need at least a 15″ Macbook Pro with 4GB of ram (for speed of handling footage) and a 7200 rpm internal hard drive.

The best advise I can offer (and that I implement with my system) is a portable RAID 1 drive like a CALDIGIT external hard drive device. This is a hard drive enclosure with two hard drives inside, that mirror each other. If one goes down, you have the other as backup, and the unit will rebuild once you put in a new hard drive to replace the one that might fail.

You will need an external power source though to run this. But in meantime – copy to you internal hard drive during day time, copy across to CALDIGIT in evening with power supply at your accommodation.

Without a unit like CALDIGIT, you will be fumbling around copying to multiple external hard drive enclosures to safely backup your days shooting, and that can be a hassle.

Units like the CALDIGIT can contain 2TG data with hard drives combined, or 1TB mirrored for backup, as I use them.

Or for a short term power supply in the field, I use my UPS power safety device that I plug my laptop kit up to anyway when I use it. As well as protection from random power surges, it contains a battery (for during power failures) that allows me to operate computer devices like hard drives in the field.

Good luck!

Cheers,
Tom

Camera Operator – Editor – Motion Graphics
(https://www.tomdavid.com.au)

[Vinod Raja]

I am preparing to film with the XDCAM EX 1 that will be reaching me in a few days time. I have two 16 GB SxS cards and hope to transfer all the filmed material to 250 GB Rugged all terrain LaCie hard drive ( with fire wire 400 and 800) on location using my Mac i book with 1 GB RAM. Please let me know if this should work out fine. I cannot afford to buy a Mac book Pro at the moment. seeking your views-

[Craig Seeman]

You can connect the EX1 to MacBook via USB. Transfer speed will only be about 4x or maybe a little slower but otherwise it should work. This of course means you’ll have to stop shooting to transfer. You can buy Sony’s card reader but you’ll need to plug that in to power to use.

[Tom David]

Will be slow transfer from USB to Lacie via iBook – though PLEASE take second Lacie drive with you for a backup – much cheaper than drive failure or losing one.

Good luck.

Cheers,
Tom

Camera Operator – Editor – Motion Graphics
(https://www.tomdavid.com.au)

[Vinod Raja]

Thanks so much for confirming that i can use the EX-1 with the Mac book.